A big thanks to Justin Patrick Moore for sending us another gardening themed music recommendation, this time a nice chilled beat-driven set from Emapea out of Poland called Seeds, Roots and Fruits.
So get those old plant pots cleaned out with some washing up liquid and warm water, give them a good dry out and then fill them with seed compost and make a start of this season’s seeds whilst this collection of tunes are on the hi-fi!
A big thanks to Jesse Yuen for letting us know about some dub happenings from 22nd – 28th February 2021 on RTM.FM Thamesmead here. It’s a week long celebration of soundsystem culture under the name of Original Selector!
Tonight at 8pm UK/UTC will be Jesse’s North of the River Swan show with a Jungle special. Tune in via the website, go to the top left hand corner and click “Live” and you’ll be treated to all sorts of subsonic bass frequencies! Looks like it’s going to be a great week!
Also we were very chuffed to be asked to select an LP (which would be played in its entirety on air) that sums up “soundsystem” for us. For us it had to be classic Dreadlocks Dread from Big Youth.
Tune in to RTM.FM this week for some serious sound system business!
Here’s some great footage of 1970’s Jamaica alongside the excellent track “Train to Rhodesia”.
Here’s some great footage of 2017’s Lewisham alongside the great Youth himself!
We were raring to go Saturday morning, the weather was going to be nice and there was so much to do out in the garden but we were forgetting one thing, it was only a couple of weeks ago we were suffering with sciatica so we had to take it easy.
We had six bags of compost delivered by Shannon’s thinking that’ll be more than enough. It was gone before we knew it and we could have done with six more to be honest. Even lifting one bag of compost was tiring so we really had to take it easy on the Saturday so we tidied up the bed by the dad corner, taking out the odd cabbage and old beetroot and filling up the raised beds to a nice depth of compost (pic above – before we started).
For one of the raised beds last year we used garden soil (we ran out of multipurpose compost) which wasn’t as good as the compost filled ones that you could put your hand in to see if there was any spuds forming on the potato plants there. You can’t do that with our London clay soil. so we dug that out and put compost in.
Today we got up early and started off a few seeds in an old propagator which was collecting leaf mould and soil at the bottom of the garden but after a wash was ready to go and now on the kitchen windowsill. We sowed a couple of different types of chillies, thyme, basil, chamomile, dyers chamomile and Medwyn’s free gift earlier this year, some “Trial seed longest Leeks” (pic below). We’ll keep you posted.
We also stuck some polythene on top of the raised beds (pic above) as we did last year and will give the soil a couple of weeks to warm up before trying a couple of seed potatoes in very early. The season has started for us now. Has anyone else made a start on the garden this weekend? If so let us know and send us some pics.
And for no reason at all, a couple of King Tubby’s dubplate mixes that we’d put up before and no doubt put up again.
We’ve just found out that it’s supposedly going to be sunny and 16° this Saturday, how mad is that? And it was only a couple of weeks ago we had snow!
There’s also signs of life in the herb pots we started off (above: Basil) using the indoor house plant compost as we don’t want to invite those fungus gnats back into the house. We were told that the supermarket bought herb plants also have been known to house the critters. Fingers crossed we don’t get the small clouds of them this year as we’ve had in the past.
We popped into Shannon’s this week and got a few bags of compost for the raised beds in the back, more indoor houseplant compost for starting off some seeds (as we don’t want to take any chances!) and some seed potatoes which are presently chitting by the window in the back room. There’s the argument that chitting don’t do that much as they’ll grow anyway but we’ve done it for a few years now and they always seem to help the plants get a good start. We may also use the “cut ’em in half” technique to get twice as many potato plants to plant. More on the process of chitting here. Here’s to the start of the gardening season.
And here’s a nice and melllow tune from Sum Total called Bakery for a Thursday evening in lockdown.
We at Weeds were very saddened to hear the news of the passing of the DJ Daddy, U Roy earlier today. Years and years ago we picked up a scratched copy of Jump For Joy/This is Another Festival on the Grounation label for 10p at John’s Second-hand shop in Hillfields, Coventry in 1978 and it went on from there…
Here’s a couple of our favourite clips of the great man that have cheered us up over the years. Some nice threads he’s wearing there too!
And here’s a piece of musical history, a recording of U Roy on King Tubby’s Hi-Fi in Kingston, Jamaica from 1975. Be warned the quaility makes some of our “3 out of 10” punk cassettes in the loft sound like sensurround sound! RIP the great U Roy!
News just in of an hour’s dub special on the shortwaves in a few weeks time in the form of KDUB. It’ll be broadcast on 9670 kHz at 1200 utc/uk on Sunday 7th March and repeated the same time a week later. There’s a mix from One Deck Pete called “In Dub for KDUB” alongside other surprises of a version kind.
Don’t worry if you don’t possess one of those shortwave radios you can always tune in here “at the allotted time” as they say on the radio. Tune in and dub out…
Big shout to our gardening friend from across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for sending us a picture of his garden in Cincinnati from the other day after some snow. We’ve had snow here in London but nothing like this. If you’d like to see his garden pre snow have a look here.
Justin mentioned he was enjoying the snow but was starting now to think about what kind of tomato seeds to start sprouting for spring. Hence the tune he sent with the pic, a dub of “Don’t touch my Tomato” by the great Phillis Dillon and Tommy McCook & The Supersonics.
Have you started thinking of seed to sow yet? We have some pots on the kitchen windowsill that are still dormant as it’s still so cold and a pot of germinated leggy coriander that is looking sorry for itself. Talking about coriander our good gardening friend Gerry Hectic mentioned Mexican coriander, culantro (more info here) the other day. Ever heard of it? It may be worth looking into.
Also this week we found a nice compilation from a few years ago compiled by Laut & Luise out of Cologne called Music Lovers Club #002. It’s worth a listen during these cold times!
More shortwave radio fun coming this weekend on the 75 Metre band courtesy of Channel 292. A transmission to mark the 20th anniversary of All Indie Radio (WAIR) will be broadcast this Sunday 7th February 2021 (and repeated on Sunday 14th February 2021) at 1700 UTC/UK on 3955 kHz. Tune in for some great music.
The programme features our good friends from across the pond DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and a mix from One Deck Pete called “Thank You John Peel” (more on the late great John Peel here) with tracks by Mogwai, McCarthy, Young Marble Giants, Stereolab and Orange Juice.
No shortwave radio? No bother, tune in here at the allotted time.
Last week wasn’t the best this end what with sciatica raising its ugly head followed by a bit of lockdown depression combined with the cold weather. And the dahlia tubers are still in the ground (hopefully not rotting away), their frost-blackened foilage a constant reminder that they have to be dug up. But in this weather? We think not. It’s better to stay in listen to some music and think of what seeds we’re going to be buying very soon as spring is not that far away!
Because of the bad back we’re still catching up on a couple of episodes of the great This is a music show that goes out on the shortwaves. If you click here you’ll be treated to the 100th edition of the show featuring 2 hours of the best in thrift shop classics, across the board genre-wise and some great reggae. A big shout to Your Host for getting the show to the landmark number! Tune in and turn on. And check their new website here and if you fancy donating a few quid/dollars to pay for airtime there please do as it’s a wonderful show!
And still on the theme of shortwave, if you’ve visited a supermarket masked up a few times this lockdown here’s a broadcast (below) that might interest you called KMRT. Listen out at 27.45 for a mix by One Deck Pete called “Buy one get one free” featuring tunes by Tyler Newman, Allen Ginsberg, Anima Universalis, Japanese Sound Portrait, Beatz for Food, Lullatone, Cantoma (Phil Mison) and Z Lovecraft. So break open a big tube of Voltarol and work yourself up into a shopping frenzy. #Supermarketsarethenightnightclubs #shoppingconnectsusall
https://soundcloud.com/user-25048993/kmrt-one-stop-shortwave-shopping-experience-9395-khz-3112021
Yesterday morning on Radio 4 was a lovely dubwise treat thanks to Don Letts with Dub Revolution: The Story of King Tubby (available on listen again here) a celebration of the dub organiser himself. Worth a listen if you love the world of dub like we do here.
And talking of the rebel dread you may remember that in 2013 that Don said about Weeds: “A Dub/Punk/Gardening blog….now’s there’s a combination I can relate to! Actually tailor made for The Don…..check my yard bredrin’….” and sent some pictures (one below) of his garden which we loved! More pictures of his garden here.
And by chance yesterday we found a link of Don and his wife Grace’s garden on Gardeners’ World which originally went out last year. Have a good butchers at the garden from 6.40 minutes in here. As Don himself says, it’s a real mix of styles! #dubgardenersoftheworldunite
Weeds up to me knees 